On aurait du mal à trouver de la métaphysique dans la science moderne. Les théories scientifiques ne nous parlent pas de l'objet, du changement, du hasard, de la vie ou de la pensée en général. Et les données expérimentales ne renferment pas d'idées métaphysiques non plus. À première vue, donc, la science moderne est étrangère, voire hostile, à la métaphysique.

Cette conclusion repose sur la supposition tacite que la science est identique à la somme des produits de la recherche scientifique. Or, cette supposition est fausse: la recherche est une activité qui ne sauiait être confondue avec ses produits. Et l'échafaudage heuristique servant à la recherche, constitué d'idées de toutes sortes, pourrait contenir des composantes métaphysiques.

It is a widely held view among philosophers that Hume's doctrine of personal identity is seriously mistaken, that he makes claims about the existence and nature of personal identity that are clearly false. The strongest statement of this view is to be found in Terence Penelhum's “Hume on Personal Identity.” According to Penelhum:

What he (Hume) is actually claiming is that we are constantly making a mistake in referring to a person from day to day as the same person … or in this way to anything that has changed in the slightest. For, strictly speaking, a changed person would be literally another person. A little effort of the imagination is enough to indicate just how much chaos would result from adopting Hume's diagnosis as the source of a prescription and using a different proper name whenever we noticed the slightest change, even in ourselves.

There is no more central feature of Francis Hutcheson's moral philosophy than his theory of the moral sense. In the past this sense or faculty was widely understood to be a distinctive and independent sense devoted to the apprehension of moral qualities, but William Frankena has in recent years challenged this traditional view of Hutcheson's theory, and offered in its place an emotivist interpretation. Without question Frankena's study was of the first importance, in that it seems to have overturned the much too simplistic traditional view of the moral sense. Unfortunately, however, Frankena's own interpretation of the moral sense is as inadequate and misleading as the view he overturns, for he concludes that the moral sense is not at all a cognitive faculty, that it does not, that is, apprehend moral qualities, but, rather, is a faculty that enables and motivates us to feel, express, and evoke moral emotions. The moral sense, he argues, is “the source of the feelings involved” in moral approbation or disapprobation, and this approbation is “wholly non-cognitive, very much as it is on Ayer's more recent [emotivist] view … This, I shall show, is much too narrow a view; Hutcheson did not limit the moral sense to a single function, nor did he — lacking as he did twentieth-century perspectives — find it either necessary or desirable to assume that the domains of the cognitive and the emotive (or affective) were mutually exclusive.

The ascription of beliefs and other propositional attitudes, as Russell called them, raises more than one philosophical puzzle as to how language is being used. A certain complexity is implied for these puzzles by W. V. Quine's relatively recent observation that propositional attitude (PA) ascriptions can be construed in two distinct ways. In particular, Quine distinguishes between what he calls transparent and opaque belief, and treatments of belief that ignore this distinction do so at their own considerable risk. However, while Quine's observation per se may help towards more circumspect solutions, what he goes on to say about transparent belief, as I will urge, adds a bogus puzzle to the real ones that confront us. For Quine holds that transparent belief is so very odd that to countenance its ascription, though he thinks that we must, brings us to the edge of nonsense. Parenthetically, I might say that I am myself mystified by his proposal to prevent our slipping over. This proposal can be ignored, however, if it can be shown that transparent PA ascription is far from nonsense. Elsewhere, I will try to show as much, but all that this paper aspires to is a negative preliminary: the refutation of Quine's main argument for his opposite stand.

In this paper I shall consider Hume's claim that it is in vain to ask “Whether there be body or not ?’ I have often been puzzled by this interesting remark; puzzled as to just what he meant by it, why he said it, and whether he was right. I don't expect to do any more than explore some of the possibilities and suggest some tentative answers in this discussion. Hume seems to have argued that we can't take this question seriously because we could never sincerely believe what we said if we denied that “body” exists; and that we can't have any genuine doubt on this head because “certain trivial qualities of the fancy” (p. 217) lead us inevitably into a “gross illusion” (ibid). We are thus stuck having to believe what we can prove to be false. Reason mocks us like a palsied hand, knocking away precisely what it tries hardest to grasp. This, I say, is what Hume seems to have argued. But let's see what else we can do with his words. I shall begin by giving a brief account of this belief in “body”. I shall then explore some senses in which the question of the existence of body might turn out to be vain.

Is self-deception always immoral? That it is always immoral to deceive oneself seems to have been the ‘received’ view amongst philosophers. Such a view was vigorously supported by Bishop Butler in the eighteenth century. Recently, Herbert Fingarette has argued for a similar position. In this paper I wish to examine Butler's and Fingarette's arguments and contend that no morally sensitive and reasonable person can possibly accept them without thereby ceasing to be morally sensitive and reasonable.

The idea of self-knowledge divides naturally into two parts in accordance with the distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. I know myself and I know things about myself. The latter I know partly from self-acquaintance, partly from the behavior, especially linguistic, of others, and partly from each of these. All aspects of self-knowledge are controversial, so I shall concentrate in this paper on the question of self-acquaintance. My purpose is both philosophical and historical. It is commonly believed that Hume and Descartes held diametrically opposed, or at least strongly contrasting, views regarding self-acquaintance since Hume is regularly ridiculed for his denial of ability to discover his own Self whereas it would occur to no one to ascribe that same view to the author of the Meditations. In this paper I shall argue that contrary to appearances these two philosophers either held the same position or Descartes occupied the more agnostic extreme; and also that the position usually ascribed to Hume is, when properly understood, both correct and of fundamental philosophical significance. Part of my reason for selecting Hume and Descartes for analysis and comparison is to show thereby that the thesis of this paper is true independently of the rationalist/empiricist schism in philosophy.

1. The problem: Here are three plausible but incompatible propositions:

(1) The answer to Locke's question (23):

Could we suppose two distinct incommunicable consciousnesses acting the same body, the one constantly by day, the other by night … I ask … whether the day and the night man would not be two as distinct persons as Socrates and Plato ?

is yes.

(2) I am a human being. More generally, human persons are human beings.

(3) Identity is not relative.

Toutes les idéologies recouvrent-elles une égale meéonnais-sance de la réalité ?

Le terme d' «idéologie », brandi comme arme idéologique, vise « une doctrine fondée sur des idées sans rapport avec les faits réels » (Dictionnaire Larousse). Ce système transmissible de rapports ne se rapporte plus lui-même à la réalité: celle-ci peut être subsumée sous ses concepts organisés en dogmes, elle ne peut plus ou n'a jamais pu être reconnue. L'adversaire de l'idéologie se donne pour tâche de faire reconnaître «la » réalité en découvrant les réalités qu'il estime essentielles, en même temps qu'il en dénonce la mécon-naissance chez l'idéologue. L'idéologie attaquée constituant l'idéolo-gie typique, toutes les idéologies ne font à ses yeux que reproduire cette méconnaissance radicale: l'une n'a pas plus de valeur de vérité qu'une autre, elles recouvrent toutes une égale absence de rapports avec le réel. Elles sont toutes aveugles au même titre et ne reconnaissent pas davantage cet aveuglement que la réalité qu'elles ignorent.

Hume notoriously maintains that contiguity, succession, and constant conjunction are individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions of causation. While his arguments for the necessity of constant conjunction have been thoroughly dissected, his arguments for contiguity and succession have generally been either ignored or misstated. I hope both to correct this unfortunate state of affairs and to show some fatal defects in Hume's account.

The pertinent passages in Hume's writings acknowledge three conceivable ways in which the temporal relation between causes and effects might be construed: (i) as separated by some interval; (ii) as perfectly contiguous, so that the effect succeeds the cause in the very next moment; (iii) as perfectly contemporaneous, existing at the same moment. Hume defends the correctness of (ii) and denies the tenability of both (i) and (iii).

On n'a jamais bien jugé l'empirisme, supposant d'emblée qu'il était l'opposé du rationalisme. En fait, qu'il s'agisse de l'empirisme ou du rationalisme, on déploie dans chaque cas une chaîne de séquences dont il s'agit de rendre les termes solidaires:

(a) rationalisme ═ a priorisme ═ principes généraux abstraits (i.e. pensée logique) ═ raison universelle ═ idéalisme ═ la vérité est raison pure

(b) empirisme ═ a postériorisme ═ pas de principes généraux abstraits ═ pas d'ordre rationnel (on renvoie à Bacon et à la chasse de Pan) ═ positivisme ═ réalisme (naïf).

Philosophers have long been interested in dreams, for a variety of reasons. Much recent discussion has narrowed the scope of the traditional concern, however, and today dreams are often regarded from a position of skepticism and implicit behaviorism. This standpoint grew out of, and helped to reinforce, a habit of regarding Wittgenstein's later work as demonstrating a need for public, behavioral criteria of meanings. Thus, philosophers have wondered if there is any sense in saying that we do experience dreams, because so few of the usual criteria of “experience” apply to them. This is no occasion to review the complete history of dream interpretation by analytic philosophers, let alone the orthodox interpretation of the Philosophical Investigations. Instead, I will report an aspect of dreaming which has been overlooked in recent discussion, apply these findings to some of the alleged difficulties of speaking meaningfully of dream experience and, finally, attempt to locate this understanding of dreaming within Wittgenstein's later work.

In an attempt to “purify” logic of existential presuppositions, attention has recently focused on modal logics, where one usually assumes that at least one possible world exists. Systems very analogous to some of the standard modal systems have been developed which drop this presupposition. We will here treat the removal of the existential assumption from Brouwerian modal logic and discuss the relationship of the system so derived to other modal systems.

Même si le concept d'idéologie remonte dans ses premiers emplois à Destutt de Tracy, il est sans contredit un concept pour lequel le marxisme réclame un privilège. C'est à Karl Marx que l'on reconnaît le rôle d'instigateur de cette problématique.

L'interprétation classique du concept d'idéologie oriente cette problématique vers l'aspect de détermination sociale des idées telle la sociologie de la connaissance qui l'identifie à des problèmes de fausse conscience, d'illusions, de justifications, etc. Que l'on se réfère à Lukacs, à Mannheim et encore récemment à Althusser, le problème de l'idéologie se pose en termes de conscience, de représentation déterminée par des conditions socio-économiques.

Alors que, dans l'Allemagne du milieu du XIXe siècle, on paraissait s'obstiner à chercher dans le Concept et dans l'Idée le point de départ de l'analyse de la société et que, dans la France de la même époque, on comptait encore sur l'éducation et sur le culte des vertus morales pour transformer cette société, Karl Marx a era bon rappeler, avec les ressources combinées de son génie et de son bon sens, que « pour vivre, il faut avant tout boire, manger, se loger, s'habiller et quelques autres choses encore » et qu'en conséquence « le premier fait historique est done la production des moyens permettant de satisfaire ces besoins, la production de la vie matérielle elle-même … » Et si Marx formule parfois cette idée de façdon un peu plus systématique: « le mode de production de la vie matérielle conditionne le processus de vie social, politique et intellectuel en général » il n'en reste pas moins assez hasardeux, compte-tenu des nombreux passages concernant ce sujet, de prétendre voir se dessiner chez lui une thèse qui, sur cette question, prendrait des contours définitifs et bien arrêtés. Sans doute est-il plus prudent de voir d'abord dans ces propos l'affirmation agacée de ce qui aux yeux de Marx aurait dû s'imposer depuis longtemps, à savoir que n'importe quelles institutions, n'importe quelles activités culturelles ne sont pas compatibles avec les diverses conditions matérielles que l'humanité a connues au cours de son histoire: « personne n'ignore, souligne-t-il en ce sens, que déjà Don Quichotte a eu à se repentir pour avoir cru que la chevalerie errante était compatible avec toutes les formes économiques de la société »

La méditation sur la mort au début du XVIe siècle se développe à la mesure des exigences humanistes qui viennent équilibrer par la raison la hantise médiévale du péché, de la repentance et de la miséricorde.

Au moment de l'exil d'Holbein en Angleterre, les représentations de la mort suscitent encore la frayeur qu'accompagne une douloureuse tristesse en face de la fragilité de la vie. Simulachres et historiees faces de la mart (1526), en plus de compatir à la souffrance humaine et de dénoncer l'injustice et l'oppression, font surgir la mort au œeur de l'activité humaine et ainsi accentuent la conscience du temps présent, la fulgurance de l'instant.

Anyone who has worked at proving theorems of intuitionistic logic in a natural deduction system must have been struck by the way in which many logical theorems “prove themselves.” That is, proofs of many formulas can be read off from the syntactical structure of the formulas themselves. This observation suggests that perhaps a strong structural identity may underly this relation between formulas and their proofs. A formula can be considered as a tree structure composed of its subformulas (Frege 1879) and by the normal form theorem (Gentzen 1934) every formula has a normalized proof consisting of its subformulas. Might we not identify an intuitionistic theorem with (one of) its proof(s) in normal form?

Ce qu'on peut appeler la théorie du discours bouleverse les fondements épistémologiques et les perspectives méthodologiques de la recherche dans d'importants secteurs des sciences humaines et sociales. L'ethnologie, la psychanalyse et, bien entendu, les sciences de la littérature deviennent le champ d'application d'un système conceptuel opératoire que sous-tend la notion de « texte », et d'un modèle d'analyse axé sur le problème de la découverte des « lois de construction » du texte. L'intérêt particulier que présentent les thèses de M. Foucault réside dans le fait qu'elles envisagent la possibilité d'élargir à l'Histoire le champ d'application de cette théorie. (Cf. Foucault, M., 1968 et 1969).

Dans son livre American Philosophy and the Future, Michael Novak nous rappelle que nous vivons sous la menace des conflits nucléaires. Si nous n'y prenons garde, nous dit-il, nous serons bientôt dans l'impossibilité de philosopher. Cet avertissement a de quoi nous étonner. Y aurait-il des bombes atomiques sans une philosophie de la bombe ?

Il y aurait bien d'autres objets, les uns plus extraordinaires que les autres, que nous apporte à un rythme toujours plus accéléré la nouvelle technologic et sur lesquels il nous faudrait aussi philosopher et même davantage. Ainsi, un éditorial de Journal of the American Medical Association nous fait part des craintes que provoquent, chez médecins et biologistes, les expériences faites en vue de la fabrication des bébés-éprouvette — ‘test-tube babies’.

Genuine ethical subjectivism is a kind of logical autism, uncurable by distinctions. It is, roughly put, that attitude according to which duty is discoverable by introspection. What I wish to call pseudo-subjectivism is more akin to an anxiety neurosis. It is a more common disturbance than the genuine form of the disease, but, happily, is easily cured without recourse to clinical treatment, by therapy than can be self-administered in the privacy of one's study. Every man his own analyst. Pseudo-subjectivism is an anxiety syndrome associated with the view that one ought to do what one thinks one ought to do. The cure consists in becoming reassured that this need not be genuine subjectivism at all. The purpose of this paper is to provide that reassurance.